Past midnight Mackenzie came to a little valley where somebody had been cutting hay. The late-risen moon discovered the little mounds of hay thick around him, the aroma of the curing herbage was blowing to him an invitation to stop and sleep. Let Swan Carlson come when he might, that was the place prepared for the traveler’s repose.
Romance or no romance, riches or poverty, he was through with a woman’s work, he told himself. Once there had been ideals ahead of him in educational work, but the contempt of men had dispelled them. If he could not find his beginning in the sheep country, he would turn elsewhere. A man who had it in him to fight giants wasn’t cut out for teaching school.
Mackenzie sat with his back to a haycock thinking in this vein. The sound of running water was near; he went to the creek and bathed his throat, easing its burning with a deep swig. Back again to the hay, still building new victories, and nobler ones, on the foundation of this triumph over Swan Carlson, the red giant who choked men to death in the snow.
Morning discovered no habitation in reach of the eye. That little field of mown hay stood alone among the gray hills, unfenced, unfended, secure in its isolation, a little patch of something in the wilderness that looked like home. Mackenzie must have put many miles behind him since leaving Carlson’s door. Looking back, he could follow the course of the creek where it snaked through the hills, dark green of willow and cottonwood fresh among the hemming slopes of sage, but no trace of Carlson’s trees could he see.
Mackenzie had no flour to mix a wad of dough, and but a heel of a bacon side to furnish a breakfast. It was so unpromising in his present hungry state that he determined to tramp on a few miles in the hope of lifting Tim Sullivan’s ranch-house on the prominent hilltop where, he had been told, it stood.
Two or three miles beyond the hay-field Mackenzie came suddenly upon a sheep-camp. The wagon stood on a green hillside, a pleasant valley below it where the grass was abundant and sweet. The camp evidently had been stationed in that place but a little while, for a large band of sheep grazed just below it, no bedding-ground being worn bare in the unusual verdure. Altogether, it was the greenest and most promising place Mackenzie had met in his journey, gladdening at once to the imagination and the eye.
The shepherd sat on the hillside, his dogs beside him, a little smoke ascending straight in the calm, early sunshine from his dying fire. The collies scented the stranger while he stood on the hilltop, several hundred yards above the camp, rising to question his presence bristling backs. The shepherd rose to inquire into the alarm, springing up with amazing agility, such sudden and wild concern in his manner as provoked the traveler’s smile.
Mackenzie saw that he was a boy of fifteen or thereabout, dressed in overalls much too large for him, the bottoms turned up almost to his knees. Hot as the morning was beginning, the lad had on a duck coat with sheepskin collar, but in the excitement of beholding a visitor approaching his camp so early in the day, he took off his hat, standing so a moment. Then he cut out a streak for the wagon, a few rods distant, throwing back a half-frightened look as he disappeared around its side.
This was a very commodious wagon, familiar to Mackenzie from having seen many like it drawn up for repairs at the blacksmith shops in Jasper. Its heavy canvas top was stretched tightly over bows, made to withstand wind and rough weather, a stovepipe projecting through it, fended about with a broad tin, and a canvas door, with a little window in it, a commodious step letting down to the ground. Its tongue was cut short, to admit coupling it close behind the camp-mover’s wagon, and it was a snug and comfortable home on wheels.
The dogs came slowly to meet Mackenzie as he approached, backs still bristling, countenances unpromising. The boy had disappeared into the wagon; Mackenzie wondered if he had gone to fetch his gun.
But no. Instead of a gun, came a girl, neither timidity nor fear in her bearing, and close behind her came the boy, hat still in his hand, his long, straight hair down about his ears. Mackenzie had stopped a hundred yards or so distant, not confident of a friendly reception from the dogs. The girl waved her hand in invitation for him to come on, and stood waiting at the wagon end.
She was as neatly dressed as the lad beside her was uncouth in his man-size overalls, her short corduroy skirt belted about with a broad leather clasped with a gleaming silver buckle, the tops of her tall laced boots lost beneath its hem. Her gray flannel waist was laced at the bosom like a cowboy’s shirt, adorned at the collar with a flaming scarlet necktie done in a bow as broad as a band. Her brown sombrero was tilted, perhaps unintentionally, a little to one side of her rather pert and independently carried head.
At a word from her the dogs left the way unopposed, and as greetings passed between the sheepgirl and the stranger the wise creatures stood beside her, eyeing the visitor over with suspicious mien. Mackenzie told his name and his business, making inquiry in the same breath for Tim Sullivan’s ranch.
“Do you know Mr. Sullivan?” she asked. And as she lifted her eyes Mackenzie saw that they were as blue as asters on an October morning, and that her hair was a warm reddish-brown, and that her face was refreshingly pure in its outline, strong and haughty and brown, and subtly sweet as the elusive perfume of a wild rose of the hills.
“No, I don’t know Mr. Sullivan; I’ve never even seen him. I’ve heard a lot about him down at Jasper––I was the schoolteacher there.”
“Oh, you’re up here on your vacation?” said she, a light of quick interest in her eyes, an unmistakable friendliness in her voice. It was as if he had presented a letter from somebody well and favorably known.
“No, I’ve come up here to see about learning the sheep business.”
“Sheep business?” said she, looking at him with surprised eyes. “Sheep business?” this time with a shading of disgust. “Well, if I had sense enough to teach school I’d never want to see another sheep!”
Mackenzie smiled at her impetuous outburst in which she revealed in a word the discontent of her heart.
“Of course you know Mr. Sullivan?”
“He’s my father,” she returned. “This is my brother Charley; there are eight more of us at home.”
Charley grinned, his shyness still over him, but his alarm quieted, and gave Mackenzie his hand.
“The ranch is about thirteen or fifteen miles on up the creek from here,” she said, “You haven’t had your breakfast, have you?”
“No; I just about finished my grub yesterday.”
“I didn’t see any grease around your gills,” said the girl, in quite a matter-of-fact way, no flippancy in her manner. “Charley, stir up the fire, will you? I can’t offer you much, Mr. Mackenzie, but you’re welcome to what there is. How about a can of beans?”
“You’ve hit me right where I live, Miss Sullivan.”
The collies came warily up, stiff-legged, with backs still ruffled, and sniffed Mackenzie over. They seemed to find him harmless, turning from him presently to go and lie beside Charley, their faces toward the flock, alert ears lifted, white breasts gleaming in the sun like the linen of fastidious gentlemen.
“Do you want me to get any water, Joan?” Charley inquired.
Joan answered from inside the wagon that no water was needed, there was coffee enough in the pot. She handed the smoke-blackened vessel out to Mackenzie as she spoke, telling him to go and put it on the fire.
Joan turned the beans into the pan after cooking the bacon, and sent Charley to the wagon for a loaf of bread.
“We don’t have to bake bread in this camp, that’s one blessing,” she said. “Mother keeps us supplied. Some of these sheepherders never taste anything but their cold-water biscuits for years at a time.”
“It must get kind of tiresome,” Mackenzie reflected, thinking of his own efforts at bread-making on the road.
“It’s too heavy to carry around in the craw,” said Joan.
Charley watched Mackenzie curiously as he ate, whispering once to his sister, who flushed, turned her eyes a moment on her visitor, and the
n seemed to rebuke the lad for passing confidences in such impolite way. Mackenzie guessed that his discolored neck and bruised face had been the subject of the boy’s conjectures, but he did not feel pride enough in his late encounter to speak of it even in explanation. Charley opened the way to it at last when Joan took the breakfast things back to the wagon.
“Have you been in a fight?” the boy inquired.
“Not much of a one,” Mackenzie told him, rather wishing that the particulars might be reserved.
“Your neck’s black like somebody’d been chokin’ you, and your face is bunged up some, too. Who done it?”
“Do you know Swan Carlson?” Mackenzie inquired, turning slowly to the boy.
“Swan Carlson?” Charley’s face grew pale at the name; his eyes started in round amazement. “You couldn’t never ’a’ got away from Swan; he choked two fellers to death, one in each hand. No man in this country could whip one side of Swan.”
“Well, I got away from him, anyhow,” said Mackenzie, in a manner that even the boy understood to be the end of the discussion.
But Charley was not going to have it so. He jumped up and ran to meet Joan as she came from the wagon.
“Mr. Mackenzie had a fight with Swan Carlson––that’s what’s the matter with his neck!” he said. There was unbounded admiration in the boy’s voice, and exultation as if the distinction were his own. Here before his eyes was a man who had come to grips with Swan Carlson, and had escaped from his strangling hands to eat his breakfast with as much unconcern as if he had no more than been kicked by a mule.
Joan came on a little quicker, excitement reflected in her lively eyes. Mackenzie was filling his pipe, which had gone through the fight in his pocket in miraculous safety––for which he was duly grateful––ashamed of his bruises, now that the talk of them had brought them to Joan’s notice again.
“I hope you killed him,” she said, coming near, looking down on Mackenzie with full commendation; “he keeps his crazy wife chained up like a dog!”
“I don’t think he’s dead, but I’d like to know for sure,” Mackenzie returned, his eyes bent thoughtfully on the ground.
“Nobody will ever say a word to you if you did kill him,” Joan assured. “They’d all know he started it––he fusses with everybody.”
She sat on the ground near him, Charley posting himself a little in front, where he could admire and wonder over the might of a man who could break Swan Carlson’s hold upon his throat and leave his house alive. Before them the long valley widened as it reached away, the sheep a dusty brown splotch in it, spread at their grazing, the sound of the lambs’ wailing rising clear in the pastoral silence.
“I stopped at Carlson’s house after dark last night,” Mackenzie explained, seeing that such explanation must be made, “and turned his wife loose. Carlson resented it when he came home. He said I’d have to fight him. But you’re wrong when you believe what Carlson says about that woman; she isn’t crazy, and never was.”
That seemed to be all the story, from the way he hastened it, and turned away from the vital point of interest. Joan touched his arm as he sat smoking, his speculative gaze on the sheep, his brows drawn as if in troubled thought.
“What did you do when he said you had to fight him?” she inquired, her breath coming fast, her cheeks glowing.
Mackenzie laughed shortly. “Why, I tried to get away,” he said.
“Why didn’t you, before he got his hands on you?” Charley wanted to know.
“Charley!” said Joan.
“Carlson locked the door before I could get out.” Mackenzie nodded to the boy, very gravely, as one man to another. Charley laughed.
“You didn’t tear up no boards off the floor tryin’ to git away!” said he.
Joan smiled; that seemed to express her opinion of it, also. She admired the schoolmaster’s modest reluctance when he gave them a bare outline of what followed, shuddering when he laughed over Mrs. Carlson’s defense of her husband with the ax.
“Gee!” said Charley, “I hope dad’ll give you a job.”
“But how did you get out of there?” Joan asked.
“I took an unfair advantage of Swan and hit him with a table leg.”
“Gee! dad’s got to give you a job,” said Charley; “I’ll make him.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Charley,” Mackenzie laughed.
In the boy’s eyes Mackenzie was already a hero, greater than any man that had come into the sheeplands in his day. Sheep people are not fighting folks. They never have been since the world’s beginning; they never will be to the world’s end. There is something in the peaceful business of attending sheep, some appeal in their meekness and passivity, that seems to tincture and curb the savage spirit that dwells in the breast of man. Swan Carlson was one of the notorious exceptions in that country. Even the cattlemen were afraid of him.
Joan advised against Mackenzie’s expressed intention of returning to Carlson’s house to find out how badly he was hurt. It would be a blessing to the country, she said, if it should turn out that Carlson was killed. But Mackenzie had an uneasy feeling that it would be a blessing he could not share. He was troubled over the thing, now that the excitement of the fight had cooled out of him, thinking of the blow he had given Carlson with that heavy piece of oak.
Perhaps the fellow was not dead, but hurt so badly that he would die without surgical aid. It was the part of duty and humanity to go back and see. He resolved to do this, keeping the resolution to himself.
Joan told him much of the sheep business, and much about the art of running a big band over that sparse range, in which this green valley lay like an oasis, a gladdening sight seldom to be met with among those sulky hills. She said she hoped her father would find a place for him, for the summer, at least.
“But I wouldn’t like to see you shut yourself up in this country like the rest of us are,” she said, gazing off over the hills with wistful eyes. “A man that knows enough to teach school oughtn’t fool away his time on sheep.”
She was working toward her own emancipation, she told him, running that band of two thousand sheep on shares for her father, just the same as an ordinary herdsman. In three years she hoped her increase, and share of the clip, would be worth ten thousand dollars, and then she would sell out and go away.
“What would you want to leave a good business like this for?” he asked, rather astonished at her cool calculation upon what she believed to be freedom. “There’s nothing out in what people call the world that you could turn your hand to that would make you a third of the money.”
“I want to go away and get some education,” she said.
“But you are educated, Miss Sullivan.”
She turned a slow, reproachful look upon him, a shadow of sadness over her wholesome young face.
“I’m nearly nineteen; I don’t know as much as a girl of twelve,” she said.
“I’ve never met any of those precocious twelve-year-olds,” he told her, shaking his head gravely. “You know a great deal more than you’re conscious of, I think, Miss Sullivan. We don’t get the best of it out of books.”
“I’m a prisoner here,” she said, stretching her arms as if she displayed her bonds, “as much of a prisoner in my way as Swan Carlson’s wife was in hers. You cut her chain; nobody ever has come to cut mine.”
“Your knight will come riding over the hill some evening. One comes into every woman’s life, sooner or later, I think.”
“Mostly in imagination,” said Joan. And her way of saying it, so wise and superior, as if she spoke of some toy which she had outgrown, brought a smile again to her visitor’s grave face.
Charley was not interested in his sister’s bondage, or in the coming of a champion to set her free. He went off to send the dogs after an adventurous bunch of sheep that was straying from the main flock. Joan sighed as she looked after him, putting a strand of hair away behind her ear. Presently she brightened, turning to Mackenzie with quickening eyes.
&
nbsp; “I’ll make a bargain with you, Mr. Mackenzie, if you’re in earnest about learning the sheep business,” she said.
“All right; let’s hear it.”
“Dad’s coming over here today to finish cutting hay. I’ll make a deal with him for you to get a band of sheep to run on shares if you’ll agree to teach me enough to get into college––if I’ve got brains enough to learn.”
“The doubt would be on the side of the teacher, not the pupil, Miss Sullivan. Maybe your father wouldn’t like the arrangement, anyway.”
“He’ll like it, all right. What do you say?”
“I don’t think it would be very much to my advantage to take charge of a band of sheep under conditions that might look as if I needed somebody to plug for me. Your father might think of me as an incompetent and good-for-nothing person.”
“You’re afraid I haven’t got it in me to learn––you don’t want to waste time on me!” Joan spoke with a sad bitterness, as one who saw another illusion fading before her eyes.
“Not that,” he hastened to assure her, putting out his hand as if to add the comfort of his touch to the salve of his words. “I’m only afraid your father wouldn’t have anything to do with me if you were to approach him with any such proposal. From what I’ve heard of him he’s a man who likes a fellow to do his own talking.”
“I don’t think he’d refuse me.”
“It’s hard for a stranger to do that. Your father–––”
* * *
“You’ll not do it, you mean?”
“I think I’d rather get a job from your father on my own face than on any kind of an arrangement or condition, Miss Sullivan. But I pass you my word that you’ll be welcome to anything and all I’m able to teach you if I become a pupil in the sheep business on this range. Provided, of course, that I’m in reaching distance.”
The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Page 4
